Orthopedic surgeons use wire drivers to insert wires into or through bones to provide support and fixation for the bone while the bone structure is mending. Prior art wire drivers are designed to be reusable. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,050,528, issued Sep. 27, 1977 to Fultz et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 4,091,880, issued to Trotner et al. on May 30, 1978 disclose reusable wire drivers. Because these prior art wire drivers must be capable of repeated use, sturdy and durable components are used to construct these prior art wire drivers. In addition, such prior art wire drivers are typically designed within an electrical coupling allowing the wire driver to be powered by an external power source, or a rechargeable battery.
After each use of a reusable wire driver, the wire driver must be thoroughly sterilized for safety reasons before a subsequent use of the wire driver. Highly skilled personnel must spend substantial amounts of time cleaning and sterilizing the wire drivers between uses. The need to sterilize the wire drivers of the prior art between uses substantially increases the cost of using the wire driver.
The wire drivers of the prior art are also quite expensive--on the order of $30,000--due to the need to construct a wire driver designed to withstand repeated use, sterilization and cleaning. Another disadvantage of the reusable wire drivers of the prior art is that their durable construction results in the wire drivers being relatively heavy and more difficult to maneuver. Due to the high cost of the prior art wire drivers, a large number of doctor's offices and hospital emergency rooms cannot afford to stock a sufficient number of units. As a result, for example, an office may have only one unit. If it has recently been used, it must undergo time-consuming sterilization before it can be used for a second patient. If a patient has an urgent need for a wire insertion, that need will go unmet or be delayed. Accordingly, an improved and much less expensive wire driver is needed to supply doctor's offices and emergency rooms.